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171 Cards in this Set
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formalism
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theory in which the work of literature is the primary focus, new critics eager to differentiate literary criticism from other disciplines and have its own conception. Ignore what author says is purpose, cut loose from man/life
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intentional fallacy
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the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art. must just look at the literature itself. "trust the tale, not the teller"
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affective fallacy
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judging a text based on the reaction it evokes in its audience
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close reading
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taking it apart like pieces of a watch-what makes it tick? structural elements like rhythm, meter, symbol, tone, etc. Formal elements separate from content, so must understand elements before you can really comprehend content
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verbal icon
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a poem, which is closed off from the outside world, not commenting on it directly (like science), takes an oblique route. Connects to world with universal values. Won't tell you how to vote, but will tell you about how the heart feels
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heresy of paraphrase
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can never do justice to piece of literature because need form and content, not just content
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paradox
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characterizes great literature - why? it fuses the ideal and the spiritual with worldly language. Ex: "This statement is false" - science's truth can have no paradoxes; poetry's truth stems from paradox
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ideal reader
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a trained formalist critic, but really no such thing because people will always disagree about who's reading is correct
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defamiliarization/Russian formalism
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change in words to roughen/slow down the readers' perception of the world, therefore changing our habitual patterns of perception. brings wonder back into the everyday environment. "Literature is organized violence performed on ordinary speech"
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id/ego/superego
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id is repository for all desires (sex/violence, pleasure principle), ego is constant negotiator (task of self preservation, reality principle), superego is embodiment of cultural/parental influence, observes ego and gives orders
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conscience
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negative punishing part of the superego. if you do something bad, you feel guilty.
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ego ideal
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positive part of the superego. if you imitate someone good, you will get a self esteem boost.
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eros/libido
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instinct for desire, will for power, sexual desire. these instincts are flexible, able to change their aim through displacement
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neurosis
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spend too much time (more than optimal time) dealing with conflicts between id, ego, and superego, instead of dealing with problems of outside world (still connected to outside world but with one hand tied behind back)
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psychosis
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stalemate between id ego and superego is too strong --- ego must turn itself inward from the outside world to deal with it
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displacement
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the changing of instincts, substitute for satisfaction. Ex: don't come home with a girl, get hungry and eat a block of cheese instead (Freud sees all art as fantasy displaced by sexual desire)
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oedipus complex
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oral phase, anal phase. Then, at age 5, oedipus/electra phase: boy wants to totally win his mother's affection. boy wants to remove his father, thinks of aggressive strategies. boy soon realizes he cannot remove his father, so what he can't beat he joins, he then begins to mirror his father and his spirit is broken. ALSO - child recognizes he is part of a family, differentiates (i am boy not girl, brother not sister)
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latent vs manifest content
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latent is what the id wants (real desire) and manifest is the distorted content of what we got and what we remember. All dreams as symbolic wish fulfillments
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dreamwork
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what happens inside your own mind to turn latent content (id) into the manifest content (symbolic expression of what id wants that is also acceptable to ego/superego
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talking cure
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use language as a tool for curing people; the patient is invited to "confess" what he conceals from others and himself. the psychoanalyst works like a literary critic by developing a reading of the "mind text". must have a keen eye for symbolism, metaphor, mirroring. find deep, partially hidden meaning
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Prison house of language (Lacan)
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language will always get there before you do, once you fall into language there is no going back. adam and eve. our relationship with language molds our deepest conceptions of ourselves and the world. cannot have prelanguage experience because the language to describe this experience already got there before you did. trapped in language's walls
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oceanic stage
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infant lives in world with immediate and complete satisfaction. mother's milk, etc.
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mirror stage
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once infant learns that his body has boundaries - looks in mirror and recognizes mother's breast is not an extension of self, self identity search. caverns of diversity within the self.
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imaginary order
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where we live pre-oedipal. ignorant of language, oceanic stage and mirror stage - sense of identity is still characterized by fullness/unification as he sees himself - he is still whole in the mirror
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symbolic order
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child falls from the imaginary order into the symbolic order after the oedipal crisis. realizes he is separate from his mother/all of society. metaphorical begins to stand in for desires "I love you mom" instead of boobs in face
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law of the father
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infant becomes subject to cultural dos and don'ts taught by the father. when child realizes incest is social taboo and society is composed of a network of differences. child is subject to father and all cultural authority he has. "you can't have sex w your mom"
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phallus
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the power of the father/society that the child must obey. boys must emulate their father, girls must obey. girls don't have to renounce love and relations with mother, boys must. child must accept phallus as rule - power of custom, law, culture
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desire
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all desire springs from a lack of real presence. language only signifies. can never be satisfied by the restless movement from signifier (manifest) to signified (latent)
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Anxiety of influence (Harold Bloom)
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take the oedipal struggle and apply it to art - all young poets are belated, they must struggle under the shadow of great works (father) for desired fame (mother). practice denial of being influenced by others, then young poet must admit his belatedness, but then identify and rebel. also, attempt to take freuds family romance and map it into literary history. every young writer finds themselves in the presence of a strong progenitor that they can't help but emulate. must engage in misprision in order to separate self from figure. Shelley after Milton etc.
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intertextuality
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can see influences of one piece on another. texts from different books are very similar because they are taken from a father text. Bloom
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misprision
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creative misprision is what allows writers to break free from the overshadowing texts that came before them. change them in some way, either by making the ending better, changing the antithesis, etc. Must engage in this in order to separate self from figure (Shelley and Milton)
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hermeneutics of suspicion (Bloom)
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any theoretical framework which sees a misleading story on the surface but a true story at depth. freud wanted to find the latent content in dreams, marx looked at stories in terms of ideologies. declares a common sense reading is wrong
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the collective unconscious (Jung)
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we have personal id, ego, etc. but there is also a place that houses cumulative knowledge and experiences of the human race. it has no tendency to be conscious. it is potentially handed down to us from the past. people respond to certain myths/stories because "species memories adhere in a collective unconscious" (archetypes etc.)
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archetypes (Jung)
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predispositions causing us to reply to symbolism in a certain way. stories and images repeated often. (the serpent associated w evil because of attacks on Savannah). great works of lit employ these archetypes to stir profound emotions in the reader. the office of the artist is to find the archetype his present era most needs
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rebus
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freud says manifest content in dreams are studied like paintings, the more they are studied the more they will be understood. WRONG, must put syllables and words in place of objects in dream to come up with meaning.
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northrop frye
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tries to link formalists with psychoanalysis. shows how literary forms arise from the collective unconscious (Marx hates this structure, historical reasons why no one reads epics anymore). literary archetypes "play an essential role in refashioning the material universe into an alternative verbal universe that is humanly intelligible and viable, because it is adapted to essential human needs and concerns". Like plotting best fit line.
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prophetic marxism
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just as ancient empires gave way to feudalism, feudalism gave way to capitalism, and capitalism gave way to communism, communism would give way to a utopian realm of equality
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analytic marxism
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studies past and present societies by paying special attention to how wealth and power are distributed and how people put up with this distribution--shows the different ways "money talks". we obey without always knowing
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base vs superstructure
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the base is the physical and economic arrangements for the purpose of work. ownership and organization of the means of production (labor laws, stock exchanges). SS is all cultural phenomena not tied directly to production (art, sports, media, religion, law, politics)
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marxist lit theory
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reflects the economic base of time, how work influences others. "always historacize". when culture gets complex, division of labor separates, never equal. those who toil, those who organize. class conflict as major developments in society -anger, fear, anxiety seen in literature. Ex: Jane Eyre with money/class relations
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ideology
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what convinces us to assent to our own domination/the general unfairness of things. for this to happen, we must perceive the system as fundamentally fair/better than any alternative and also impossible to change. ideology forms members of different classes into people who would never ever dare to rebel. what passes for truth is actually created by historical circumstance - ideology makes people think things are unchangeable. ideology's success lies in concealment. Ex: John wayne lone hero westerns
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the subject
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the consumer of ideology. we think that we act freely but we are really victims to ideology because we act with its influence without even knowing it
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alienation
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fruits of toil are separated from the worker--shoemaker in middle ages vs shoemaker in factory. now, shoemakers feel an emotional emptiness, adults wants a meaningful relationship with their life's work. poetry as nonalienated labor
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complicity<-->resistance
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literature is closer to being resistant to ideology. it is a place where human values that are at risk of being expunged by capitalism can find refuge. a personal revolution might spark a larger revolution. nevertheless, even if a novel seems resistant, it can never be fully resistant because it is still culturally considered literature. naming literature literature is ideological in itself. Ex: Romantics wrote about utopias because they did not like industrialism. Marx says utopias stupid because not feasible alternative to industrial capitalist society
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ideological state apparatus
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puts phrases in people's heads instead of cops on every corner. comes from each strata of society that has narratives about society. people at the top tell of the american dream, people at bottom more negative. top strata stories have more supplies for reproduction so there is more circulation. ex: curriculum in elementary school, tv programs, bestseller books. all presented as neutral but all related to one another
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hegemony
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creates niche in the mind that is hard to change. the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of the society so that their worldview is imposed as cultural norm. Artificial social constructs
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hailing/interpolating
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ISA's address us as people who have already accepted them (even if we haven't). if they continue hailing us in this way, we eventually believe it. power of convincing. ex: othello buying into the idea that black is evil, saying things like "we all know that..."
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organic form
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great works of literature have the same characteristics of the human body or plant. resembles natural body in the way that everything in it is necessary to the final effect. (heart, lungs, liver, etc). nothing is superfluous and nothing is missing either. Marx and psychoanalytics think of this as an illusion (find place where something is unnecessary=author unsuccessful in applying ideology). ideal in new criticism.
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stabilize the sign
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link certain signifiers with signified. ideology of signifier and signified = sign. ideology shapes literature and literature exposes ideology. truth and falsity are purely cultural. what is truth? the general social agreement to pronounce certain sentences on certain occasions
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signification
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the battle to get to name something your way. social struggle is the politics of signification. ex: abortion=is it the right to life or the right to choice? in lit, the greater the writer the greater the opportunity for political intervention because books evoke models of how the world is. well written texts are read, persuade, have power. Shakespeare
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new historicism/cultural poetics
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a refinement of Marxism, not everyone believes the same thing, there is variety. history embedded in text and text embedded in history (history is not a background to the text, it is a part of it). cultural ideals presented.
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episteme
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a system of beliefs sophisticated enough to have variety/contradictions. historians once assumed everything had to harmonize/all people thought the same way. New historians understand not all think the same way, do not oversimplify the past.
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textuality/historicity
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embedded within one another
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reader response theory
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great works of lit release energy within us. the real author is hard to know because we only read their works and form a vision (robert frost as a prick). narrator, narratee, implied reader
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real author
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real person with bank account/mortgage. hard to know this person only really their work. vision of the author that is not real. Robert Frost as prick
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implied author
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vision of the author we get from reading his work (rob frost seems nice)
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narrator/naratee
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narrator is speaker of the novel, values can be far from those of the implied author. narratee is the fictional character who hears the story and relates it to us (heart of darkness, frankenstein)
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implied reader
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who author thinks writing is being written for--there is a big gap between the real reader and the implied reader. Ex: emily dickinson didn't know we would read her work
if asked to be too different, work will fail to engage us |
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real reader
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us! real people! while we are reading we are hailed and move temporarily closer to the implied reader. if lit changes your viewpoint you won't go all the way back to being the real reader
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textual gaps
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author intentionally puts gaps in works so that the reader has something to figure out on his own/keep his imagination busy. leave something out so that the reader can be a collaborator. too few gaps will make reader bored, too many will strain. filling these in with own experiences allows for greater, more personal signifcance
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concretization
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deep emotional ties. filling in a text with our own personalized mortar. brings it all together (text and imagination). creates paradoxical situation in which reader must contribute their own experiences and then see them through new perspectives
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wolfgang iser
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rejected new critical/formalist verbal icon of reading. not a spatial experience, but a temporal one. iser says it is more like listening to a symphony than looking at a painting (you have to assess the entire experience at the end). he takes temporal account of reading, how the reader changes over the time it takes to read. start to read-initial perceptions, expectations. each page we shed some assumptions, change opinions, form more assumptions (reading backwards and forwards at same time). forget about ideal reader, how much does reader contribute to meaning? textual gaps etc.
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horizon of expectations
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the best literature refutes our preunderstandings or makes us see preunderstandings as ideology. we come to a book with expectations, a good work of lit changes these expectations. Ex: uncle toms cabin, narrative of the life of a slave girl, etc.
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mere "culinary" works
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do not challenge or change any preunderstandings, does not change our horizon of expectations at all.
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fear of interpretive chaos
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potential text richer than its individual concretizations. which concretization is better? --interpretations vary, but within boundaries that stop just short of anything goes. big dipper as plow or spoon, but not fish
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E.D. Hirsch
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had problem with the idea of one meaning by the author. different people will interpret differently. the meaning is what the author meant at the time he wrote it, the significance is what any audience makes of it
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meaning vs significance
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meaning is what the author intended at the time he wrote the piece, significance is the way the audience interprets the piece. meaning doesn't change, significance does. the author's intentions are likened to perceiving a box--the unconscious implications belong to the whole (which is part of the meaning) Ex: Wordsworth's poem is optimistic in meaning but pessimistic in significance
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psychic intention
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everything that was in the writer's head when writing. readers are limited when getting at the intended meaning because we won't know everything that was in his head (author met someone who is basis for a character, etc)
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verbal intention
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subset of psychic intention that readers are expected to find and share in the text (only found in text). character is allergic to a cat. we see a cat so we know.
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interpretive communities (Stanley Fish)
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each community will construct a different intending author because all we have left of the author is his text. Ex: wordsworth's poems are interpreted differently by different groups, we will never know exactly what he intended, therefore there is no such thing as meaning, only significance
incommensorate - the space between interpretive communities overlapping - when diff communities agree |
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Stanley Fish
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objects to Hirsch's constraints. acts of recognition are the source of intepretation--as soon as they knew it was poetry, they interpreted it as so. facts don't determine viewpoints, our prior viewpoints determine the facts. all objects are made, not found, but the means of production are social and conventional
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skilled reading
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knowing how to produce what can thereafter said to be there. interpreters do not decode poems, they make them. students making list into a poem.
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sign
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signifier and signified package. signs exist at the intersections of social struggles. meaning is never full present (scattered because comprised of what it is not)
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great chain of being
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the chain of god, angels, humans, animals, mud etc. old historicism about the great chain of being getting disrupted etc.
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cultural poetics
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marxist classifications of people are extremely broad. cultural poetics see beneath the grand strategy of social struggle to the different culture classifications. Marxist is macro, new hist is micro. theory does not reside serenely above ideology, but is mired within it (i.e. representations of the world in written discourse are engaged in constructing the world)
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dominant vs supplement
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mind over body, reason over instinct, man over woman. binary oppositions. one would not be the same without the other. the definition of one also helps to define the other.
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full presence
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meaning is never fully present in the sign (signifier + signified). full meaning is dispersed on a chain of signifiers. cat means cat because not a goat or dog. cat is furry animal or jazz musician, neither as more real. impossible to find original context
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Derrida
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deconstructionist, traces of the words the sign has excluded in order to become itself. the trace (bears the trace of everything else) robs words of full presence
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differance
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the chronic insufficiency of language. from french "to differ" and "to defer", full meaning is forever deferred, language is composed of differences. because all language is metaphorical we will never be certain of meaning because so dispersed
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determinant meaning
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impossible to obtain because meaning has nothing to do with the universe--we make it ourselves. you can never be secure or certain about meaning. uncontrollable fecundity of language. all textual meaning is indeterminate.
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"there is nothing outside the text"
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Derrida says we are all texts, we are entirely made out of language
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transcendental signifier
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a stable marker of an entity that is beyond all question. name of a value or norm that is off-limits for discussion or challenge. terms like god, freedom, democracy. (exempt from differance). anchors that appear to stabilize a system of thought and language
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logocentrism
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belief in some central, stabilizing word. the belief in the absolute authority of some word. the need/desire for a final authority somewhere
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metaphysical system of thought
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anything that relies on a transcendental signifier (like god). at the heart of literary works. if a word is found that makes us certain and secure, then we enter a metaphysical system of thought
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binary oppositions
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the dominant (valued) and supplement (looked down on). Male vs female, mind vs body, reason vs instinct. doppleganger/parasitic elements. binaries collapse themselves- the dominant tries to deny the supplement and vice versa but they can't do it. domination of upper term is only covering up the defining power of the supplement. dominant is more fragile than we think
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aporia
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where the text begins to contradict itself as dominant tries in vain to free itself of the supplement. deconstructive theory targets the places where the text tries to assert something as the absolute truth when it doesn't seem right AKA what a text claims to say and what it can't help but say is always differing. starting point of this is binary oppositions with conflicts in signification (the tempest and the wood?) or "a slumber did my spirit seal" - text is forever going to claim that death is a form of life and life is a form of death
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undecidability
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deconstructionists say there is no point in trying to nail down one reading as the best reading. (formalists and new critics want to reconcile).
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literary matters over racial matters
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issues of race make literature possible
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new world freedom over old world freedom
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flight from old world to new: Hawthorne and Poe are not really about freedom. this country is not really all about freedom but people assume all US lit must be about freedom because US is all about it. if told this, you will see freedom. Morrison wants us to look at bondage too
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new (white) american over enslaved black african
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official story is that american is a new kind of man. argues there is a term missing. american is really a new kind of "white" man that require black "other" to establish characteristics of white man. race as important aspect of lit even without knowing it. the supplement is already in the dominant even in it's supposed isolation.
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Barthes
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argues to forget the chastely inter-textual. if we forget all of this, forget about authors, then great possibilities arise. lit should be a dialogue between texts, not a monologue. readers should not be hung up on authors. "boundless intertextuality"
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the rustle of language
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Derrida, a million leaves/texts interpenetrating each other. in letting texts speak to each other, we get a sexy dialogue between books
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freeplay of language
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limitless (positive inability to reach true meaning). every word is connected to every other word in the language
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plaisir du texte
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Derrida and others. reading has a sensual richness/pleasure. the more ways a text penetrates, the better. need to enjoy and look at fun of language (not just herms of suspicion)
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literature vs writing and author vs scriptor
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literature and author has dates, writing and scriptor is unbounded by dates. the scriptor is born with the text, no original, no first, no root to tree. scriptor as born simultaneously with text (no other existence before moment of pronunciation).
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sex/gender system
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sex is what is between your legs, gender is socially constructed. set of arrangements by which biological sex is shaped by societal conventions into gender - underwrites system of partriarchy
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patriarchy
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a state of affairs where gender arrangements are constructed by men to ensure men are elevated above women.
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esteemed woman vs sexualized woman
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esteemed associated with the mother, where you love you cannot desire and vice versa
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madonna vs whore
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madonna is loved, not desired (Miranda). whore is desired, not loved (Madame Bovary). angel in the house vs madwoman in the attic. the angel in the house is a poem about a perfect, passive woman. the madwoman in the attic is demonic because of her power and grasping (Bertha in Jane Eyre)
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feminine
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pre 1880. strictly repressed feminine expression. any questioning of patriarchy had to take place in convert/symbolic form. Ex: Yellow Wallpaper
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feminist
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1880-1920. female ways of knowing the world are openly celebrated in lit. symbolic traits coded with certain genders, home seen as sanctuary facilitated by women. writers dramatize the plight of slighted women. Ex: Frankenstein (Eliz as madonna/angel in training)
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female
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after 1920- women feel free enough to write like women about any subject Ex: To the Lighthouse V Woolf (able to write about how men and women think about things, like art)
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separate spheres of labor
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labor divided to unite women and men--reciprocal relationship. a taboo that creates gender. differs widely, but exists almost everywhere. i.e. women as hunters
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traffic of women
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women as currency in marriage. implies a distinction between gifts and givers--if women are gifts then the men are the givers. (frankenstein and tempest) women have no say in transaction
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Anglo american feminism
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response to why women's writing seemed "off"/why women's writing has a limited scope:
women's disguised struggle against patriarchy: writing about jobs they are suppressed into doing what is trivial vs important is defined by man women made to feel guilty/self conscious in the first place men have a certain definition of organic form that women couldn't meet--women's writing beginning to develop a new organic form |
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convergence feminism
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women's lit is different from men's because a patriarchal society demands separate spheres. women are now catching up because they were repressed. this is matter of culture, not biology (like the french think). it is possible for male and female texts to converge if they become equal
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French feminist theory
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about differences rather than convergences. Helen Cixous and Luce Irigaray--women's writing as exercise in freedom, rather than an examination of women's repression
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Lacan on feminism
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all attempting to regain oceanic stage. both sexes are kicked out w/ law of father, genders do so in different ways. boys have to live in symbolic order, girls are victims of symbolic order and do not (more in touch with imaginary order)
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L'ecriture feminine
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women are less invested in symbolic order because it categorizes them as inferior. French say this results in distinctly female methods of thought and writing. women's writing will never converge with male writing because they are of different wiring
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male writing vs female writing
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male: plot driven, linear plot, narrative efficiency, climax of decisive action, tight closure!
female: character driven, cyclical plot, narrative exhaustiveness, climax of decisive utterance, open ended... |
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female writing
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women will incorporate oral pleasures of imaginary order. more in touch with bodies in all senses, closer to song. difference in writing corresponding to different methods of female sexual pleasure (male as genitally oriented). care less about ownership and more about shared, mutual responsibilities
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feminine essentialism
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differences in female vs male writing are result of ESSENTIAL quality of women (biological, not cultural). even if day comes when men and women are equal, their writing will not look the same.
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figurative vs literal writing
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figurative is male, literal is female. women don't have to leave imaginary order so they do not value symbolism in writing the way men do. figurative language considered more sophisticated.
Lacan explains that the son views his mother as literal, her absence makes language more important. son searches for not the mother herself (forbidden by father) but for figures of her. daughter prefers literal. |
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rights and responsibilities
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men think in terms of rights, women in terms of responsibilities.
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masculinist
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participating in all ways on the masculine side of the spectrum. Victor fails at foresight of what creature's life will be like. does not nurture him. science isn't bad, just needs more women
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personal criticism
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readily builds intellectual communities by putting own lived experience into reading--let what most affected you sing. Ex: Shelley's book about powerful creators transgressing boundaries, her husband and buddies thought they were poets who were "legislators of the world"
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masculine gaze
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one person looks, other is looked at. the one who looks (men) have the power. men gaze, women are gazed upon. females try harder to look good. Ex: creature's ability to gaze on Victor
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immasculation
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turn woman into male by making her adapt a masculinity and giving her a male sensibility. books can be immasculated by giving them a male voice. used often in reader response theory (implied reader etc). female writers writing under male names
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Michel Foucalt
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certain kinds of witness to history (literature) are not ranked as high as other more traditional documents. we don't treat something written by a shoemaker the same way as something written by a king. the way we divide knowledge is not natural (it is done by history, theology, literature)
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discourse/discursive formation
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history values certain people over others, but this is not natural, it is cultural. (flowers and weeds). in order to really examine culture, material must be eclectic. important to look at relations between statements without regards to authors, authors intentions, authors knowledge of one another.
do not engage in hierarchy of sources if you want to broaden your horizon |
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power/knowledge
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Foucalt says it is impossible to separate the two. writing them together is the only way. there is no power without a specific field of knowledge and no knowledge that doesn't result in some form of power. Ex: Prospero
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Prisoner's cell/panopticon
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prisoner's under surveillance--the ultimate carceral society. the more we know about a subject the freer we are is WRONG. maybe the more we know, the more restricted we are because we begin to create categories. modern culture has seen increase in surveillance (punishments now long and drawn out). homosexuality as act---species
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carceral society
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society that doesn't correct us briefly and spectacularly but tries to mold us. schools, hospitals, all resemble prisons---operate like panopticon
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homosexual panic
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sudden recognition within yourself that your desires are "dirty"
hetero and homo not enough categories for all experiences |
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energizing myth
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colonizers need this. makes efforts of colonization seem worthy and noble. Ex: conrad has civilizing mission, cannibalism is reason why efforts are worthy
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othering
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cannibal myth is an example of othering, or making them different from us, defining each. writing conquered people into opposite of what you are. binary oppositions
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traveling metaphor
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stories about colonialism are actually a symbol for traveling into the european freudian subconscious. using the same general categories of othering anywhere they go. a "them" and an "us" everywhere.
cannibalism is bad there, so bad here. |
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universalism
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a different culture is just your culture but at a different point in time of developing (westerners think they are in their prime)
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orientalism
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concerned with ideas of what we can do and what they cannot do/what we can understand and what they can't
depends more on west than orient, really writing about ourselves/congratulating ourselves. lit as way of civilizing without educating too much or too little |
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mimicry
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asking colonized person to be like you, but cannot become exactly same because there must still be some superiority. it is a blurred copy of the self that resembles you. dangerous because it is a parody of you---relieves and threatens the colonizer
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comprador class
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when colonized start to write back. intellectual natives are set up to engage in inter-culture interactions. the fact that they can speak eloquently to their colonial masters can compromise their legitimacy as natives
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subaltern
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one of inferior rank. this voice is stifled and can't speak or understand colonizers. how to give the publicly voiceless a voice? if given this voice, no longer subaltern. how to hear the authentic sound of silence?
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authenticity
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the accurate recuperation of precolonial traditions. write like we did before the white man came. back to old traditions, customs, subjects, genres, styles
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nativism
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first duty of post-colonial culture/writer is the search for authenticity -- to get back to the ways they used to write. repeats colonialism by denying history. reclaim national identity/history
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post colonial essentialism
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all people in a particular group share same traits--always have, always will. Myth that erases differences and flattens out diversity
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hybridity
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the colonized and colonizers both live transcultural ways of being -- happens inside the contact zone. Ex: native american on horse
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contact zone
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place where cultures come together and are blended
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pigdin vs creole
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when cultures make contact, pigdin is the simplified version of the master's language for economic purposes (no one speaks at home)
creole has native speakers, grammar, vocab and is a new freestanding language created by merging cultures |
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scandalous categories
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binary oppositions blend into one another by adopting cultures food, cross marriages, etc. place of taboo and anxiety, how to be true to yourself in borrowed robes. good place for literature
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palimpsest
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if a text had served its purpose, they scrape it off and start over new -- animal hide with many layer of writing on it. every culture/text can be viewed as a palimpsest
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national allegory
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post colonial works - the protagonist's battle is that of the culture. represents culture (protagonist's fate is culture's fate). Jamison says all third world texts share protagonist that seems to embody nation. (accused of essentialism)
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orature
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anxiety about capturing oral traditions. how to write it down without killing it? things that happen orally can be just as moving and important as the written word. motif of journey/return
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eco criticism
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to 1985: to qualify as an ecological text, work had to appreciate natural as more than just background. nature and culture as separate, individual as a solitary person trying to establish a primordial link to nature
after 1985: texts that taught about interaction between nature qualify, nature and culture as one, interest in environmental justice in addition to preservation, individual as a social category and what is "natural" is culturally determined |
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culturalism
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belief that language wholly creates reality. everything out there is pliable. (eco critics say no, not nature)
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anthropocentrism
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man is the center of all things/universe. what is good for him is good for everything
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instrumentalism
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the world is just raw material for whatever we want to do with it. at the disposal of humans
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illth
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the destroyed landscapes that result from people trying to gain wealth. wealth is privatized, illth is public.
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place
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space to which meaning has been ascribed, where nature and culture come together. place is centered around human presence, never "history-less". there is an assumption that because a place is a certain way, its people are a certain way. crazy jungle = crazy peeps
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land ethic
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one has responsibility to a community, this community includes the land, soil, plants, etc. enlarges boundaries of community to include natural
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dwelling
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to live amongst nature and appreciate it as more than just instrumental, living there because it is where you feel you belong
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the pastoral
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genre in which a character goes to countryside to get spiritually healed etc. ethical advantages of countryside=farming etc. Need for pastoral relief (town=corrupt, wilderness=wild, pastoral=wholesome)
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naive vs sentimental poetry
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naive: ancients treated the natural world as an extension of the human world, so they did not mourn it or celebrate it
sentimental: always suffused with irony or regret, like an invalid for health, nature is seen as a doctor/remedy we want to try to get back to the naive but we can't |
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post humanism
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de centers human beings from the center of the universe. man is not the measure of all things, just one tile in nature
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wilddoren/wild/wilderness
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anglo saxon, "where beasts existed, place beyond human control". "wild" has remained for 1500 years. the wilderness has not been touched by man but doesn't exist anymore because everything has been touched by man (global warming). location that cannot be neutrally represented, always socially constructed
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sublime
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beauty tinged with terror, beauty that also infuses fear, wilderness as part of the sublime. astonishment at vastness of nature and terror of inhumanness of nature
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ecocidal
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acting in a manner towards the environment that eventually gets you killed (global warming). behavior that destroys the environment that, in turn, destroys you.
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ecology
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oikos (home) and logos (word). the word of the home, the domestic, the hidden/nonpublic. we start thinking of the environment as our home. "decay" as a good thing.
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theriophobia
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fear of animals. in what way can/should literature depict the lives of animals? getting the science wrong, but the support for animals right. Social utility in falsifying the lives of animals - get people to care more. Ex: Flipper versus Jaws.
Language brings us closer and further (lives like a pig) our capacity for suffering joins us to animals..human gaze etc. |
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environment of evolutionary expectation (EEA)
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place with characteristics of life and evolving - people out on the Savannah
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reproductive fitness
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gaining of adaptive traits that help you live long enough to pass on to the next generation.
costly signaling gets you laid, reproductive fitness allows you to live long enough to reproduce |
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hardfact tribe vs talltale tribe
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hardfact tells stories about exactly what happened, talltale tells fiction. talltale will survive better because of this, -- literature is not a luxury, it is necessary for survival
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sexual selection
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as time goes on, certain features become signals for general fitness and reproductive fitness (peacock tail)
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costly signaling/sexual display
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if there is a big, beautiful tail, then bird must be fit all the way through and therefore the best option for a partner. language is a costly signal because we judge people's mental fitness by their speech (poetry about love)
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uncoupled cognition
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you can uncouple one reality from the real reality (video games, tv, books). 10% of lives are devoted to untrue stories
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scenario testing
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every story has trouble in common
stories teaching us about specific problems/troubles and giving us an experience of trouble that hasn't happened to us yet. help us survive in the future. main benefit is problem rehearsal (trying out risky feelings and not having to pay for it) |
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cheaters/freeloaders
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cheaters go around the rules and disobey them, freeloaders reap benefits of work they did not do. we want to know what other people's minds are thinking because we must be able to identify the cheaters and freeloaders
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inclusive fitness
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evolutionary adaptations that help a group compete with another group, brotherly love flourishes against a common enemy. Ex: lit about war.
understanding other people's behavior and regulating the group behavior in order to help us survive |
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altruistic punisher
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punishing cheaters--lessens your fitness while improving the group's, why do this if not for own reproductive success? inclusive fitness traits.
spite as altruistic punishment. society will thrive if it has enough altruistic punishers. Hamlet "i must be cruel only to be kind" fiction allows us to indulge in evolutionary rage to punish guilty and reward good. punishment as joy proposed, not watched |
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strong reciprocator
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when you punish someone who has not hurt you (but has hurt others). minding everyone's business. another character knowing that a cheater is a cheater (author's form of strong recip). strong recip as the hero. sexy because you can afford to punish
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cooperator (innocent)
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if not all cooperators are strong recips, society will fail. cooperators are not cheaters, they just cooperate. a non punishing cooperator=second order cheater. impressive stability results when people are punished not just for cheating but also for not punishing cheaters
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post-modern culturalism
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evolution created human brain, brain created culture. characterizing culturalism when saying no world out there. everything changed when language evolved---a fire that cannot be put out
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